My travels in time - from horse and carriage to jetset

My travels started early. I was less than two years old when my parents started to look for a better place to live their life than a small village somewhere in the eastern part of Poland, close to the new border with Russia. It was just after the Second World War and Poland was a troubled country with post-war borders just being enforced. We had a long trip ahead of us. Not so much in kilometers but in duration. It took few days to reach the destination but my mother and me, still a baby, traveled in the comfort of something like a gypsy wagon. My father was a very enterprising man, and he always knew how to take care of his family and how to create a good life for us. We traveled to this Promised Land, and for us, it was a small industrial town in the central part of Poland. The name of the town is unpronounceable, sorry.

I did not like the place because my mother did not like it and she was my role model. It was a small town, but perhaps not so by Australian standards. Even if around 70,000 people lived there, it had a feel of a small gossipy place, and it was full of fumes of the factories around. I was happy and excited to move to Warsaw when I finished my HSC. It was a move a little more to the west again. This time I traveled by train, and it was a great upgrade on a horse and cart of my first life trip.

Then I started my shuttle traveling between the town of my early youth and Warsaw where I studied. Warsaw was a big city, and I had to do many adjustments to fit in. Some were good some not so good. I learned to smoke cigarettes to be more like other students. This part I regret now. But generally I had a really good time in the big city, and after a while, I felt like I belong there. I became a Warsaw girl.

Then I fell in love with a man I met at work. He was Swedish and after few years of being married and living in two different countries, I lived in Warsaw, he in Vienna; we decided to move together and the place to live together was Paris. Not so bad, really, especially that being a true Pole I loved anything French. This is difficult to comprehend as French never treated Poland all that well, but we loved them with love without reciprocity. This time I traveled by car and I recall with fondness our Alfa Romeo sports. I thought it was an upgrade on the train that brought me from this smaller town to Warsaw.

We were very proud of our Grand Turismo Veloce

It was an interesting time, but after the three years of my husband's Paris assignment  and me being a housewife, it was a time to move again. We were looking for an English speaking country and even if Australia was not on our list at first, we were lucky to be directed by fate to come to Sydney. It was 1979, and the new life started then. With some stretch, I could say that I traveled west again and this time by a jet set. Another upgrade on means of transport. 

After being naturalized a few years later, I legitimately call Australia home. Yes, I have my “charming” accent which is rather strong and people sometimes ask me about my nationality, but I feel Australian even if I sound a bit funny for an Aussie.  

A Fraction of the Whole

I have always liked things normal, realistic and had problems with enjoying aspects of surrealism. This applies to art, its particular part – literature, conversations… Generally anything. I like things to be down to earth and practical.  Maybe love has been an exception. I was rarely realistic in this field. I experienced many uplifting moments, though. I am writing it just to be truthful, but this is actually irrelevant to the subject which I want to write about.

I want to write about the book I just finished.  Fraction of the Whole has been written by Steve Toltz. As I am still under a very fresh impression of the last pages, the feeling of dizziness is overwhelming. To me this is a surrealistic book. All 700 pages of it and I have read it! I must confess that I was skimming the last 200 pages as by that time I have decided that it is not my type of book and that the need for pleasure of reading light fun prose has been already fully satisfied. I also lost hope that the book may teach me something of value or answer any of my existential questions. For some time I was being led to believe that this particular book might do that.

As I have read most of the book with some interest and the fact that many people found it if value shortlisting it for the Man Bookers prize the conclusion must be that this is an interesting book. In many ways “interesting” seemed to just weird and my pragmatic side had problems with digesting it. For some reason I did continue reading. One of the reasons might have been the fact that I was lent the book by my neighbour whom I like, respect her judgment and share taste in films. But there was definitely more than that. The book held some sort of fascination for me. I liked the language and its typical Australian style, expressions and language. I was not aware, before I read the book, how characteristic Australian use of English language really is. This stems from a specifically Australian approach to life. I do not feel I can substantiate this bold statement, but I am convinced that there is a lot of truth in it. It was really fun to read this humorous, ironic prose. The language held my attention for a while and than there was a promise of philosophical epiphanies. So I kept reading. The promise, however, was not fulfilled. At least, I did not get it. Then the story kept my attention, but it started to take ridiculous turns and became completely unbelievable. At least to my practical mind. I could not make much out of potential symbolism of the story either, if it was supposed to be there. The book was puzzling for me. Maybe I did not get a joke? I must say that this is not always I get the Australian sense of humour. Maybe I am not that much of an Australian as I fancy myself to be? Hmm…

Steve Toltz, even if an Australian, lived and worked in few countries and if his book has some autobiographical elements his roots may lead to Poland. Has he visited the country? Does he know anything about it? This I do not know, but he writes about Warsaw in 1956 and, in my opinion, makes rather unpleasant historical mistakes. If this part was a joke, then I definitely do not get it. It would be terribly bad taste too. This part was just a couple of pages at beginning of the book and it not put me off to the extent to stop reading. Still a serious put-off.

Would I recommend this book? No, not really. At least not the whole one. The style, the language is really great and amusing, but I did not find much beyond that. If any of my readers has read the book and has  a different opinion, I would be really interested and I am ready to face a challenge or revise my views.

This is another book about writing a book! Epidemics?? Karl Ove Knausgaard, Elena Ferrante and now Steve Toltz. The order in which I listed the authors is of my reading and liking rather than according to the chronology of writing the books.

My blog has been affected by referer spam; my statistics are great but totally wrong. It has been with me for quite some time and finally I got fed up and I am planning to migrate to Wordpress soon. This means that I will have to start anew but, new beginnings always made me feel good. I still have to learn and decide few things before it happens. This is only an early warning.

My new fascination – Karolina Czarnecka

I have not written for a long time about Poland. It is not that I have lost interest due to not visiting the country this year. It was because Poland is going through very difficult, complex times and I did not feel qualified to write on the subject. And I have been scared and concerned about the country future.

I follow the events closely, though, hoping for some positive change. Not the “good change” that is currently implanted in Poland on many fronts. I will keep my silence on the subject, at least for a while, except the recent events and the last black Monday protests against the total abortion ban. Polish abortion laws are already one of the most restrictive in the world, and now things were going to change to forbid abortion under any circumstances including rape, incest, and danger to the mother's life or irreparable damage to a fetus.  It was proposed that not following the rules would result in prison for mothers and anyone helping in removing the pregnancy. This also included incidental damage to a fetus. Like miscarriage or medical intervention to protect the mother’s life. 

                                        

                             

I just wanted to paint the picture of the context in which I was lead to find out about one of the young Polish actresses Karolina Czarnecka. She was very active in the Monday demonstrations so I looked her up. And I found her song. It is a song the young actress sang as an assignment at her acting school. Some of her friends placed it on YOUTUBE and the song immediately went viral, and it has over 23 million hits today. The song, to me, is a very convincing warning against mindlessly and joyfully getting on a death road through drugs.

I am aware of most likely losing the interest of my readers through translations that do not work well, but Karolina caught my attention to such an extent that I listened to this and others of her songs almost the whole day.  Here is the song. One needs to share, so I do. 

The song is about a shy, sweet boy, Jimmy who on his way to school met a dealer and bought from him three fixes. He even got one for free to close the deal in style.

The school principal was right to order Jimmy to share his good fortune equally with everyone. It was a wonderful and original gesture; any school should resist the evil of selfishness.

The chorus sings:

Heroine, coke, hash, LSD

This party is dreamt of at nights

LSD, heroin, coke and hash

Share with friends all that you've got

Now, Jimmy is in paradise with his friends and saints started to do drugs with the newcomers from the school.

Going back to the protest supported by the young actress, the Polish government after the eventful black Monday changed its mind and the current abortion laws will remain. At least for now…

Where are you from?

This is the question I often need to answer. There is nothing wrong with such a question in general terms, but for quite a while it irritated me and even upset me sometimes. I have not felt comfortable with my emotional reaction. I wondered if somewhere in my deep subconscious I felt inferior for being Polish. I did not like such an option, but maybe it was something in it after all. People in the old communistic block had a different lifestyle, substandard regarding affluence. The difference made us feel inferior to some extent, and the value of culture and richness of intellectual life was considered to be compensation. The system now belongs to the past and some changes in Polish societies are not necessarily positive.

I was born Polish, and now I live in Australia. Most of the time, I feel that I am an Australian. I retained my “charming” accent, but even being aware of that accent does not make me feel any worse or different. We have so many accents here, in Australia.

So, why the question irritates me still? I sometimes even answer – From Mosman – playing innocently unaware of the real intention of the question. Mosman is the suburb I live in. On the question of nationality, I answer – Australian. This is true; I have a dual nationality. I am not a person who invites controversy. At least, not often. So, why do I bite in this case? Suddenly, the reason and justification for my reaction came to me. I realized that such a question marks one as different, not belonging. This is an excluding question if asked early in a conversation and without any practical need to know the answer.

                                   

In times of the refugee’s issues bothering the world, it is particularly important to think twice before we mark someone as being on the outside and not allowing them in. I am not going to fight any battles in this post, I have not thought it through enough, but I know that classifying someone as an outsider, hurts. If we do so, let’s realize the hurt of the other as well as our own need for security which may be based on false grounds.

The Chinese Curse

May you live in interesting times. Even the Chinese origin of the statement is apocryphal, and I am going to make adjustments to serve my purpose. I want to modify it a bit to say - May you live an interesting life and examine its merits.

This blog makes me look back and reminisce, observe my past and myself in it. This is sometimes like self-psychoanalysis. My life has been interesting and seems to continue along the same line. I mean, continues to be interesting. I have lived in four countries. I was married to three wonderful men. One at a time, I would like to clarify. I have lived in three exciting, big cities: Warsaw, Paris and Sydney and some not so big and not so exciting: Włocławek and Düsseldorf. I had the interesting and successful career, changing my profession three times. I have had many great friends and have met many interesting people. I traveled quite a bit; I walked on fire, I have learnt many useful and not so useful skills...  

I feel that there have been many, many changes in my life, many very good ones and some character building. I was born in a small village in Poland somewhere close to the Russian border in the part of Poland that is still considered to be in the Poland B category. This means behind normal Polish standards. The happiest times of my childhood I spent with my grandparents in a village where electricity came long after the rest of Poland was considering it a normal convenience. Then it was time to go to school, and they were times spent in the industrial town, I consider small. Ray from Mummulgum thought that 75,000 citizens constitute a metropolis. People have different ideas about things.

When the time came to go to Uni in Warsaw, I felt really small and insignificant, lacking looks and manners of a big town girl. I was tutored in the big city skills by my husband to be. He was a man about the town; smoking, riding a scooter, knowing how to behave in fashionable places and generally very impressive, perhaps not only to me, a girl from a small town. I caught up with all of that jazz in a short time.

The next major step was to learn how to live in a western country with my second husband, extremely elegant in his looks and behavior. Another need and opportunity to smarten up. I rose to the occasion again.

All of that may look like bragging, but it may be just the opposite. Recently, in discussion with a friend, I was asked about happy moments in my life. The memories of times spent at the home of my best friend came immediately to mind. I have many such wonderful memories, and I hope I will be adding to them with time passing. We were nineteen years old when we met and when I was first invited to her home. From the first moment, when I entered the house where she lived, I was enchanted. It was a quintessential family home, and her parents seemed to me, quintessential parents. Warm, kind, caring for their daughter and her friends. The place smelled of good, homemade meal we were soon going to have. I felt accepted and invited to this sanctuary from the first hello and the first warm smile of the parents. This has never changed even after the parents passed away. The mother left us quite recently. She lived 105 years and to her last day she was up and about making sure that there is no drop in the family standards. My friend took over the home and cooking, but I always recognised the school of the old lady. The cooking and the place itself have been modernized with time but with respect to the roots and the family traditions. To me, it always meant love, safety, authenticity, generosity, stability, and happiness. To this day when I cross the gate, I enter this very special atmosphere, and I know it will warm me up and restore my spirits.

My friend has lived in the same place since her early childhood, has been a math’s teacher all her working years, married to only one great man also a teacher. She retained the important friendships from way back while I lost many of mine through moving. She is a mother of a wonderful young man, happily married and a proud grandmother of a beautiful and clever girl. In my mind, she has all that I would love to have. However, I made different choices. I wanted to have an interesting life, and I have had what I wanted.  No regrets, but have I lived in agreement with my core values?

Fire walking the second time

Yes, yes, once was not enough, I had to do it again. In my previous post, I wrote about my first encounter of Tony Robbins and my very negative first impression of the jumping guru. I developed disrespect from the first sight. Later I was forced to pay attention to his ways as my intention to do the fire walk was firm. I came to a conclusion that I need to follow what he says otherwise I either escape the challenge or burn myself. Consequently, I started to jump when was told to jump, I did the airplane pose when I was ordered to do so, I became reluctantly diligent. However, after the fire walk, my approach to Tony Robbins changed dramatically. I showed up early on the next day and was prepared to listen carefully. This time Tony was a little subdued, still exuberant and enthusiastic. This time, I had a different attitude, though. I stopped disapproving and started to pay attention. The messages were simple. This was not an exercise for intellectuals, and there were over 1000 people there. The message had to reach all of us.  For me, it was the first encounter with NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming. It was not called that way during the seminar, but it was clearly a crash course - NLP for dummies. The NLP methods are very powerful and often have the bad reputation as they are often used to manipulate people. Some salespeople love it. I do not like its manipulation powers, but NLP used without any hidden meanings is fantastic. I got hooked and with time did many courses to become an NLP master practitioner. 

The question asked by LECH and kvd related to my previous post was: could one get hurt as a result of such a  walk? I was asking myself the same question. My experience was that I felt as if I was walking on something rather cool. Was it a hoax? Part of NLP is hypnosis, and Tony can put big groups of people under hypnosis, I believe. Could one walk on fire without a psychological buildup? In India fire walking is done with much less hype than in Australia, I believe, maybe different methods are used to put people in a kind of a trance? I think that one needs to be prepared for the walk one way or another. What is important for me in the whole exercise is that I was able to win over my fear. It had great motivational value to me.

After the fire walk weekend, I started to read Tony’s book – Awaken the Power Within. I studied it; I did all the exercises from the book. As the result, I got the Australian driving license after many years of delaying it, lost some weight and applied for a job that I thought was beyond me. My application surprised the high management, but I got the job! As Tony advised – if you want something – ask for it! They can only say no, but there is also the second option. So simple and it works, I wonder why it is so easy to forget such good lessons. Another advice that stayed in my mind – if you want to achieve anything important – take massive action! Writing this post is proving very useful for me, I am reminding myself things that may make a difference in my life today. I took massive action recently at bridge, and this is bringing positive results already. Hmm…

As I had those doubts about the real temperature of burning coals, when the next opportunity arose to do the walk again, I took it. This time, Tony Robbins sponsored three young men from Youth Off the Streets under the care of Father Riley. My husband and I were supposed to support the three boys, so we walked on fire again. It was not such a profound experience as the first time, for several reasons, but I was able to observe more of what was happening around me. I saw people walking away from the fire paths without doing the walk. Looking at their faces was powerfully telling the story of how damaging it can be to drop your dreams and positive intentions.

In the bathroom where people were washing their feet after the walk, I started to chat with a girl who also walked the second time. One can get addicted to this challenge. She said – I did not burn myself, this time, the first time I had blisters for some days. For me, it was a confirmation that the coals are really hot and this made the walk legitimate. I exclaimed happily – really?? You burnt yourself ??? this is fantastic! She knew what I meant and said smiling – thank you very much, this is really nice of you to be happy about my misfortune!

My fire walk

It was quite some time ago; I was approaching my 50ties birthday, and it seemed to be a scary time. I was close to a very serious and advanced age. It is strange how with passing time I sometimes get younger rather than older. Not chronologically, of course, but in my mind. The first time it happened to me was when I was 24 years old. I have been married for two years and reality did not match my naïve expectations of happiness ever after. I was restless and discontented with my life, but I was already 24! It seemed to me that is was too late to change my life, too late for true happiness, too late for anything really.  I decided that I had to stay in the unsatisfactory situation to the end of my miserable life. I am exaggerating a bit; I was naïve but not that silly as all that. I remember one beautiful summer morning when I felt so unhappy in spite of warm and yet fresh air and sweet ripe apricots I could pick directly from the tree growing next to the terrace linking to my bedroom. I was visiting my in-laws outside Warsaw, and this was a great place. Silly me, I did not recognize the paradise around me, I was just thinking about the drudgery of life ahead of me. It was going to be a life of duty to follow once given promise. Divorce did not seem to enter my mind. I have to commend myself for that. I was going to honour the vows in spite of making a mistake in marrying too early, almost against my parents' judgment and with no life experience. This is another reflection and a rather serious one. As this post is not a serious type of a post, I leave it for later, maybe...

     

What I want to say is that at the time I was twenty-four and thought I was already too old for changes. We struggled for the next two years, and I somehow started to feel young enough to put mistakes behind me and start again. This time, I decided that from now on no marriage for me. Possibly living in sin, if I happen to come across true love, but no marriage! I believed it spoils romance and makes any relationship drudgery. It is quite fun to recollect such moments and difficult to think that it was actually me. So I got younger after two years and reorganized my life to become an independent woman. I remained independent, but not for a long time unmarried.

I did not think about my age until approaching fifties. Suddenly, I started to think about myself as a person becoming old, and I got scared. I was not prepared for that.

When attending a business seminar at the Sydney Entertainment Centre led by Tom Peters, I found a flyer on my seat advertising Tony Robbins “Unleash the Power Within”. It was called a seminar, so I was under impression that it had something to do with business. It promised to change my life in a positive way, and I thought: this is just the thing to prepare me for crossing over to fifties. I even got my company to pay for the program so strong was my belief in attending a business seminar. My husband must have read the leaflet more carefully than myself, and he decided to join me. Maybe the power within was to be unleashed, but not his wife. I will always be impressed by his move, clever and supportive even if a bit controlling. 

                         

When I read that the part of the program included a fire walk it was too late to change my mind. If I withdrew, I would lose my self-respect, I would consider myself a coward, it would hurt me rather than help to combat the resistance to getting old. And one Friday evening we showed up at the Sydney Entertainment Centre and were immediately surrounded by rather strangely enthusiastic people. Not our class, darling, I though. Tony Robbins did not make a good impression on me either. I was standing amongst this strange crowd and totally disapproved. It was a strange environment, and I knew that it was a big mistake, a huge one! There was no way out though and Tony in preparing his audience for the fire walk scared us out of our wits. First, he scared us and then taught us how to manage the walk. It was NLP in action. Anchoring, mirroring and matching and other skills to help us with this crazy activity which was ahead of us. I realized that I might disapprove of the undignified  movements we were encouraged to follow, but if I do not listen to what he says I either will not do the walk or burn myself rather badly. So I started to do the oooooh… while pretending that I was a plane taking a turn followed by an energetic clap of the hands. Then we were supposed to make a fist. I felt very silly, but that lasted only for a while, and then I was taking off with the best of them making silly noises and then making a fist. This was anchoring of a resourceful state in which we were going to march into the burning coals. I was amused and impressed looking at my normally very sane Swedish husband doing his oooooh and pretending to fly. It was not his scene, and I think he did it for his crazy Polish wife. It must have been love.

                                             

                                        

Then the time came when we were supposed to cue for the walk. There were several places where the coals were burning. We picked one. I was shaking, wondering if I can do it, but I was clenching my fist as if my life depended on it repeating the walk mantra under my breath. When we were very close to our start, my husband offered to show me how to do it and go first. I would not have it. I wonder what it says about me, hmm… Then I went… the coals felt as it they were cool, I was in a trance. I can not remember how many steps there were, perhaps not too many, but I felt the heat of the fire on my face. At the end of the walk somebody poured a bucket of cold water over my feet, another crazy stranger hugged me, my husband was close behind, and the trial was over. We hugged people around us, and we jumped out of joy. It was fantastic! And it was over!

                                    

On reflection, it was the peak of my life so far. Big, big achievement, touching support of somebody I loved and the next half of my life was still ahead of me. I felt as if I was flying while coming home over the Harbour Bridge in the early morning hours. I was full of brave, exciting plans. I felt unstoppable like Tony promised. He said it will change my life and it did.

I was really well prepared to face my fifties and I actually started to feel young again. The time started to rewind itself like it did when I was twenty-six. For some time at least. Maybe another fire walk?